Beyond the Team: Team 7Boom

This article is the first of a series focusing on different Esports organizations. The idea is to expose the Esports public to realities that usually are inaccessible to most of us, the life and struggle of teams and players which are attempting to break out in the Esports scene. This article will be dedicated to a German team called 7Boom, the team is decently known in the German Hearthstone scene and has been an active organization for around a year.

Team 7Boom: The Story

Clash of Cards League 2 table

The team was founded in August 2015, and it is entirely composed by German Hearthstone players. 7Boom was started by Jan “Godie” Eichhorst, Leon “Vanhinten” Seyb, Falko “xRockedx” Schindler and Tobias “Tobmatz” Reinhardt (currently inactive). The initial idea was to have a competitive roster which would allow players to have solid practice partners in order to dominate the online tournament scene. In the months between the founding and January 2016 the rooster underwent numerous changes, slowly improving as time went by. Finally in January 2016 a core for the team was found. In January 2016 they also decided to participate in the Clash of Cards League, an event organized by the German streamer DarkwhisperL. He invited some well-known teams, for example Penta Sports, and gave the chance to 4 amateur teams to qualify for the event. Team 7Boom managed to qualify, they destroyed the competition and won each of their series’ at the qualifying tournament. Once in the real league their streak continued, where they lost only one series in the whole event. The league lasted from February to May. All the series were best of 11, meaning that 3 players per team each fought one player from the opposing team, players brought 2 decks each. Due to their successes 7Boom was invited to the grand final against Penta Sport, unfortunately the event was cancelled due to DarkwhisperL deciding running the tournament wasn’t worth it anymore. Here the streak stopped, the morale of the team fell down and 2 players decided that they didn’t want to continue competing with the team and quit.

After this the team morale fell and those who continued playing did so with lost hope of being able to break into the competitive Hearthstone scene. For a month and a half they continued competing but the team didn’t go forward, with the business side of the team left on the side-lines. In mid-July 2016 a part of the team decided to give the project another shot and they reformed the team, they kicked out inactive members and restarted actively pushing their brand on social media. This was a rough process, coming back from a disappointment is never easy; nonetheless they since have participated in a lot of Strivewire tournaments and having really good success. As of now without sponsors they are having difficulties attending big events like Dreamhack, so they are focusing on expanding their brand. The team currently has players and a web-designer, they are considering an expansion for the management aspect of the team but the main priority is sponsors. You can make Business enquiries at: sevenboom@yahoo.de

Team 7Boom: The Team

Leon “Vanhinten” Seyb

Name: Leon “Vanhinten” Seyb

Age: 18

Team Role: Captain.

About him: His in game tag is “InYourFace” but he prefers to go by the name Vanhinten, he is a mysterious guy in that sense. As I last checked he is the 25th best player on Strivewire, but he has held the number 1 position numerous times before. In real life he is a student, currently completing his Abtour (German diploma). He started playing during the Hearthstone beta but only started playing seriously in January of 2015. His favourite deck is the long gone Combo Druid, which means some would call him a scumbag. As of now he substituted comboing people down with brawling them out of the game, being very proficient with Control Warrior decks. Before Hearthstone he played Yu-Gi-Oh on a semi-competitive level, not an uncommon theme amongst top players. One last thing to mention is that he doesn’t like RNG effects, especially Yogg’Saron. He feels that you can play a whole game of Hearthstone which is then put aside and completely put in the hands of a coin-flip, this is neither fun nor interactive. The tournament finishes don’t do this guy justice, looking through his tournament history one will notice he consistently gets very close to top 3 finishes.

Tournament finishes:

1st place Arachnicon Team League: Flowesports (128)

1st place Tuesday Night Cup #4 by Vctory.com (256)

2nd EUSKO eSports CUP #11 (256)

3rd Battle of Nations #2 [Germany Qualifier] (256)

3rd place Wakeful Wednesday #8 by Team Pyrolyse (128)

Hraban “AlbinoRabe” Falk

Name: Hraban “AlbinoRabe” Falk

Age: 23

Team Role: Coach and supporting role for the team, meaning that he will fill any hole which needs filling. As a coach he helps analyzing the games and helping the players get prepared for tournaments. For now, he also competes as a player.

About Him: In real life he is a networking administrator, in game he loves to play Freeze Mage in order to make other people suffer. He is the only one in the team with no Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic background; he is more of a Pokémon TGC guy. Fun fact, his favourite card is Flying Pikachu First Edition. He initially got picked up as a substitute to compete as part of the second team. After a while the second team got dropped, but since he was a valued member of the team he was kept. Even if he is officially the coach he is not to be underestimated as a player, he has numerous victories in various Strivewire tournaments and is constantly competing in the Legend ranks. As mentioned before he is cruel, his all-time favourite deck is any variation of Freeze Mage. As many know right now there are many Warriors and running Freeze Mage might not be the best choice, thus he likes running the control version of Dragon Warrior. If there is one thing to define him, it is that he likes drawn out games, he is a thinking kind of guy.

Tournament finishes:

1st place flowesports.com Cup #6 powered by Pokerstars [Standard Mode] tournament with several top (256 competing)

About him: He is doing the Abtour second wave, meaning that he decided to defer his diploma by a few years and gain work experience instead. The first card game he experienced was Yu-Gi-Oh, where he played the game semi-competitively. As he got older and the Yu-Gi-Oh metagame became anti-fun he decided to switch to Hearthstone, this was during season 2. From there he continued improving at the game, watching streamers and constantly playing the game. After a few months he joined a clan in order to be able to improve at the game. He soon realized that his ambitions were higher than his teammates, that he wanted to be in a more competitive environment and thus he decided to leave. This is when he joined Team 7Boom, an ambitious group of players looking to try break into the competitive scene. Since then he has been one of the driving forces behind the team, providing both invaluable insight as a player as well as working on expanding the brand. Additionally he managed to improve as a player, getting himself into Legend every season since he first joined the team. He expressed hope for the future and he is giving his 100% in order to succeed.

As a player he likes Control decks, his favourite deck was Handlock. Due to the Whispers of the Old Gods nerfs and Handlock becoming unplayable, in the current metagame he enjoys playing as a Control Warrior. On the other hand, he is competitive and thus will play what he feels is best to climb the ladder with. With the advent of new Worgen Warrior for the last week he has devoted himself to learning this deck, he both thinks it is really strong and really fun to play. One last bit of trivia, he has been doing magic for 8 years, if you are ever around him check your wallet it might disappear!

Tournament Finishes:

3rd StriveWire’s Little John #79

4th Hearthstone Hamburg Fireside Gathering #7

Andrej “Bequiet” Traudt

Name: Andrej “Bequiet” Traudt

Age: 27

Team Role: He is a player, in fact he has an impressive track record of tournament wins.

About Him: He is an industrial mechanic, he joined the team 4 months ago hoping to be able to improve as a player. He was consistently hitting the Legend ranks but he felt he could never break the top 100 barrier unless he found someone to train with. He decided Team 7Boom was a good place to start as he saw them play in the Clash of Cards league and was impressed by their winning streak. Before Hearthstone he played Fifa professionally for 4 years, he quit Fifa 7 years ago because he had to concentrate on his studies. When the Hearthstone beta started he was invited and fell in love with the game, from then, like in any relationship, it has been on and off, but he has been playing consistently since December. He is more of the SMOrc type of guy, preferring aggressive and midrange builds. He has some interest playing combo decks, but mainly he likes winning; he will play whatever he feels is good in the current metagame.

About Him: he works as IT system electronics technician for a telecom company, this means he keeps the servers stable in order for people to enjoy their calls and internet. Before Hearthstone he played other trading card games, namely Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic. He is one of the co-founders of the team and still believes in the project he started building one year ago. He would like to keep competing as a player, he thinks he would enjoy playing in tournaments more than managing the team, but he is open to possibilities and is happy to be the team manager for now.

In Hearthstone he prefers Midrange and Control decks, as Fartstone he really used to like Handlock as an archetype. Nowadays he mostly plays Renolock and Midrange Hunter when trying to climb the ladder, even though every now and then he likes to play Malygos Rogue in order to one shot poor priest players.

About Him: He is the founder of the team and the guy who decided the name. His thought process when naming the team was simple, everybody knew and hated Dr Boom, the name would stick inside people’s heads. He studied graphic design and I must admit it paid off, the site for Team 7boom looks really on point (www.7boom.de). As is a common theme with many Hearthstone players he comes from a Yu-Gi-Oh background and he is currently studying media and management. When he has time to play Hearthstone he enjoys playing Tempo Mage despite it not being very effective. He said the reason he likes the deck is that he likes to grow his Mana Wyrm and well who doesn’t?

Tournament Wins:

2nd place Tireless Tuesday #63 [Hero Elimination] (32)

Final Remarks

Overall talking with all the members of Team 7Boom was a pleasure, hearing about their experience in the Esports world gave me insight in a scene which I never knew about. The inner struggles of smaller teams very often gets overshadowed, with only the success stories such as Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk’s are known to most of us. As usual any feedback on the article is always appreciated and you can comment on reddit or the Game Haus forums, I will attempt to answer everybody’s queries. This concludes the article, and who knows maybe next time I will get to interview Team 4mana7/7!

If you are part of a team and are interested in an article please send a couple of paragraphs of your team history and biggest achievements to K1332823@kcl.ac.uk, I will make sure to reply to you with my decision in maximum 2 business days.

Boom!

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